It's surprising to me that eBay don't provide more tools to build an AboutMe profile page for users of their system. I guess at one time they were concerned about people using eBay purely as a tool for finding products and then taking the transaction offline. And it would interfere some with their rating/reputation system. But now they are beginning to open up, it's time to open up properly.

Then there's the issue of a common sign in system. It ought to be possible to sign in with a common login to eBay, Paypal, Skype. It's the same problem Google is currently tackling and MS have tried to tackle in the past with passport and in the future with Infocards. eBay's vast number of accounts in the three systems now give them the opportunity to play in the Identity Server space as well.

And so to numbers. "The combined users bases of Yahoo! Messenger, AOL, Google Talk, QQ, MSN, and Live Messenger dwarf Skype" Is this true and to what extent? I *think* Skype has overtaken YM! and is closing in on AOL and MSN. It's a small sample with a skewed audience but this poll puts Skype at 45%, MSN at 30% and the others nowhere.

I seem to be waiting in vain for MSN Messenger and YM! to interoperate with chat, voice and video. And for LibJingle to bring voice and video interop between iChat, AIM, GoogleTalk, Jabber, Trillian and Gaim. Meanwhile Skype continues to churn out a new release every 2 months and bug fixes every 2 weeks.